Nodding Off
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: Wherein Sherlock finally falls asleep on a case, during an experiment, and Molly is there to catch him.


**Disclaimer: **The characters of _Sherlock _are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.

**Note: **Written for this prompt on the _Sherlock _kink meme on LJ:

_Can I please have a story about a poorly and exhausted Sherlock being looked after by Molly? Maybe he shows up at her house unexpectedly, all messy and broken and delirious and she has to get him into bed and comfort him, and she feels all awkward and sad and doesn't quite know what to do at first...?_

(And this may or may not be in memory of a labmate who will never read this but who actually did fall asleep while experimenting.)

**Nodding Off**

Molly thinks Sherlock is overdoing it. He's told her that he doesn't eat when he's on a case, and she knows he's been working on one for over a week now. He has constantly been underfoot at Bart's, and as far as she can tell, he's being held together by caffeine and sugar and sheer will power. She's heard his doctor friend berating him for skipping meals, and turned a blind eye when John Watson brought Chinese takeaway to the lab - food isn't supposed to be allowed - in an attempt to get Sherlock to eat. Molly had had to throw out the little white boxes in the morning because Sherlock had most pointedly _not_ eaten the cashew chicken, and it had gone bad, having been left on the lab bench overnight. It was much, much later when she realized that the wreckage hadn't included the fortune cookies. She might have worried less if she'd noticed this sooner. Or maybe started leaving packets of the things in discreet but obvious places for Sherlock to find.

Yes, she realizes that she is being a mother hen, even if it isn't her place, but she doesn't want to stop, and is actually unsure whether she could stop worrying about him if she wanted to.

She _knows_ Sherlock is overdoing it when he drops his phone.

It's a slow progression into disaster. She should have seen it coming when he asks her for help with an experiment. He never asks her for help. He asks for cadavers, for chemicals to take home, for access to the lab at 3 AM, for disembodied fingers no-one is using at the moment, not for actual _help_. Molly doesn't mind that - well, she minds being treated as little more than a fence for possibly illegal-without-a-permit things, but she doesn't mind Sherlock working in the lab on his own. As far as she can tell, he knows how to use things properly, and has never been the cause of so much as an overheating error. But he asks for help now, and, God help her, she can't refuse, even if it means staying overtime.

He doesn't ask her to do much, just weigh powders, adjust pH's, and occasionally hand him things from across the room. It feels strange to Molly, and she wonders why he asked at all - Sherlock never needed an assistant before, and she is pretty sure that she wasn't asked for the benefit of her company. They work in silence, for the most part, only exchanging words to make a request or to acknowledge one.

There is a quality to Sherlock's voice that makes her wonder if he sleeps at all when he works a case.

He sinks down heavily onto one of the stools while they wait for the centrifuge to stop. Molly sees him pull his Blackberry out of his jacket pocket and begin to text. She goes on to mix buffers for her own use (best not to waste time), and after a while, she notices that the faint sound of Sherlock tapping out messages on his mobile has stopped: there is no noise in the room except for the gentle whir of the machine as it spins down his samples and the hum of the air conditioner.

Molly turns to look at him. Sherlock has sagged in his seat, head drooped forward, with his dark curls spilling over eyes that are almost certainly closed. She can see that his mouth is a little open, slackly so, and the Blackberry is held perilously loose in his right hand.

As she wonders if she should wake him (and, actually, if waking him would be the right thing to do, seeing how tuckered out he looks), his head makes a jerky, bouncing nod, and the Blackberry falls to the floor with an almighty clatter.

This apparently surprises him as much as it does her. He is jolted awake before Molly has time to react, and he looks around wildly, saying, "Because Lestrade has a fish bone, you see!"

He blinks blearily and his hand reaches for the fallen mobile (a futile effort, given that his fingers are grasping for something about a foot off the floor). He's saying something, but Molly can barely hear him - she just catches snatches, incoherent in that deep rumble of his, of lobsters and gels and towels and how Anderson is an idiot. She may not have the deductive powers of the world's only consulting detective, but she can tell that Sherlock Holmes is fighting to stay awake and losing.

The stupid (_beautiful_) idiot. Molly pokes his shoulder tentatively.

"Er," she says. "Sherlock?"

He snaps into motion, straightening up, snatching his phone off the floor. "Hm, yes, I'm awake, I'm _awake_," he insists, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Thank you, Molly."

"Um." There is. No reason. At all. On Earth. For her. _Not_ to speak her mind. She's a grown woman, not a mouse, and it's for his own good anyway. "There's - there's a couch in the staff room. If you'd like. To lie down."

"No, no, I'm fine." Sherlock shifts his shoulders in a sort of truncated stretch, gives a little grunt as he does this. "Coffee, though, if you would, Molly. Four sugars this time."

He tries to resume texting. Molly can see that the message he was working on is a confused mass of consonants and punctuation. His head dips as he thumbs the 'clear' button to erase the mess, and he almost loses his grip on the phone again.

Molly bites her lip. She has never seen Sherlock Holmes like this before, and she finds it fundamentally disturbing. Unsettling. All synonyms thereof. It's not in keeping with what she knows of him, and Sherlock showing weakness - physical, uncontrollable weakness - makes her want to hug him. _In a perfectly mother hen, platonic way_, her brain supplies quickly, _that has nothing to do with how you look at the exposed triangle of skin at the neck of his shirt or his bum or anything like that at all. Just very clean hugging._

"No, Sherlock," she says.

"Sorry, what?" He looks at her as though he thinks he might still be dreaming.

"I won't get you coffee." She puts her hands on her hips, and marvels that she has actually managed to say a straight sentence, in the negative, to Sherlock. "And I won't let you get yourself coffee either. You're completely knackered. Not eating for days, and not sleeping too - that's not how people live, that's how people _die_." It feels like the most she's ever said to him in one go.

"You're being overly dramatic." Sherlock lifts himself off the stool, totters a little as he checks how much longer his tubes have to spin. "I'm-"

Molly never found out what Sherlock was, because, impossibly enough, he seems to have fallen asleep standing up.

"_Sherlock_!" She pulls at his sleeve, and is alarmed when he sways gently and begins to fold downwards in a slow, languorous collapse. She doesn't catch him as much as provide support on his way down.

His head lolls as she tries to shake him awake - he's heavy, not as heavy as she expected he'd be, but heavy enough to require a miracle if Molly is to haul him off to the staff lounge on her own. She blushes a little, glad that he can't see the redness she feels rising on her cheeks, and delivers a series of light slaps to his cheek - Heavens! - because shaking him by one shoulder is not getting her anywhere. Sherlock's lips part just a little as she does this, and she wonders what it would look like if somebody were to come in the lab right now, with Sherlock crumpled on the floor and Molly bending over his head in her lap. She's already teased mercilessly for her blatant crush on the man as it is.

As far as she can tell, there's nothing really wrong with him. He's just asleep, and soundly too. She says his name, repeats it with increasing levels of volume and urgency, and her efforts are rewarded by his gray-green-blue eyes fluttering open. They take in the situation and squeeze shut again, and Sherlock turns on his side, head still pillowed on Molly's lap, to all appearances settling himself down for a nap right there.

Molly makes a frustrated noise. She takes the pinna of his ear between her finger and thumb and delivers a sharp, twisting pinch. It's almost obscene, how satisfied she is when Sherlock tries to struggle upright, a hand going quickly to the side of his head.

"_What_-?" he begins, but Molly cuts him off.

"You fell asleep on your feet." _Silly man_.

"Oh." He rolls to the side, off Molly and onto his stomach, supporting himself with his elbows. He looks embarrassed as he gets to his feet, unless Molly's eyes are playing tricks on her.

"And you are going to have yourself a nice nap," she says firmly, "that does not involve stools or linoleum." _Or my lap._ "I'll lock you out of the lab if I have to."

He doesn't protest as she guides him out of the door and into the corridor, though he murmurs weakly about continuing his experiment. He also walks unsteadily, and Molly hovers at his elbow as he weaves in meandering curves to the staff room just in case he topples over. It doesn't seem all that unlikely.

Sherlock regains a modicum of self-control by the time he gets to the sofa Molly has been offering him, and he sits on it as straight as he can manage instead of lying down, insisting in bleary tones that he can take care of himself, that he has to work, that it's _important_ and Lestrade is expecting results. The effect of this is greatly diminished by the fact that he slumps lower and lower as he speaks, and that his sentences wander off into limbo before he finishes them.

Molly interrupts him to ask if he'd like a glass of warm milk, and he says yes, please, that would be nice.

She feels rather as if she's pulled one over him as she gets him his drink. It's highly likely that he wasn't even aware of what he'd agreed to. (No, she is not thinking of what else he might agree to in his state, she's a good girl, she is.) She returns to find him sound asleep, just where she'd left him. He is snoring, a soft, buzzing hum that is not altogether unpleasant.

Molly gently rearranges him so that he's lying down (mostly - he's too long for the sofa, so she keeps his legs bent at the knee, and his feet on the floor). She finds a pillow for his head, and drapes his long coat over him. The milk she leaves on the glass table next to the sofa, just in case he still wants it when he wakes up. Sherlock's sole response to all of this is a slight wuffling noise.

She can't quite help herself, and pushes a curl out of his face, regarding him carefully. Sherlock looks so peaceful, and she hopes that he's getting real rest instead of going over the facts of the case in his dreams.

She leaves the staff room on her tiptoes and goes back to the lab to finish his experiment - she feels that it's the best possible thing she can do for him. When she has printed out the results and placed them neatly next to the now cool cup of milk, she finds that Sherlock has stirred enough to curl up, his face buried in the fat padding of the back of the sofa. Her eyes take in the curve of his back, the lines of his nape between his hair and the top of his jacket, and Molly allows herself a soft, wistful sigh. She's a good girl, yes, but she's only human after all.

When she has built up the nerve, she takes his mobile from his jacket pocket - this doesn't wake him - and uses it to phone John Watson to ask him to pick up his flatmate. The doctor arrives later to collect Sherlock, who is much better for his few minutes of sleep. They argue briefly about getting Sherlock fed (John is in favor of this; his flatmate is not), and before they leave, Sherlock thanks Molly for finishing up in the lab. He doesn't touch the milk.

The depression he has left on the too-short sofa is still warm, and Molly, feeling guilty, daring, and silly all at once, first sits, and then curls up in the space that until recently had contained one Sherlock Holmes. She imagines that she soaks up the warmth he has left behind, imagines that she can smell him on the pillow and on the upholstery. It might be foolish, but she suspects that this is as close to Sherlock as she is ever going to get, and she's going to take what she can.

She falls asleep herself, wrapped in secondhand body heat and the faint suggestion of aftershave. The dreams are pleasant enough, and she will not ask for more.


End file.
